January 12, 2011

Scholarships Can Be Found for Almost Anything

A friend of mine has a son entering college this fall. The son is not athletic and is not going to qualify for any academic scholarships. However, he's not totally out of the scholarship business. In fact, he's doing quite nicely.

My friend and his son have always liked to shoot rifles (trap shooting) and they both are pretty good at it. And it just so happens that the college the son is attending has a shooting team. The son applied for a shooting scholarship to try and off-set the costs of what is a very expensive private college and ended up securing a $6,000 scholarship for the first year of college. How sweet is that?!

Now who would have ever thought that a school would have a $6k shooting scholarship? Not me. But I'm guessing that if there are shooting scholarships then schools have all sorts of funds to give for "unusual" sports and activities. Anyone out there know of any? Or maybe you received one? Please share your thoughts with us all in the comments below.

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My son has ADHD ( attension defeciet hyperactivity disorder) and is apply for a scholarship linked to that. He is also apply for an Eagle scout scholarship, A scholarship through our local VFW which is the sponser of our troop and he will be attending the medallion scholarship competition at WMU. Of course it also helps being in the NHS and did well on the ACT and has a GPA of 3.84

similarly there are those that are awarded to people that meet very specific criteria . . . example: a local rotary club scholarship for kids who live within the city. not many apply, so the probability of getting them are rather high. i secured 2, a 4k and a 2k when i was entering college

I got need based financial aid for my undergraduate education. One of the conditions of this aid was that if I got a scholarship from an outside organization, that award would be offset by a reduction in my need-based financial aid. If the college determined that me and my parents could pay $10,000 a year and I got a $1000 scholarship from the Rotary Club for instance, then now they assumed that we could afford to pay $11,000. According to this logic, we needed $1000 less in need based aid. That meant there was no point in applying for any of these outside scholarships.

It never hurts to apply. I think most people simply aren't aware that these opportunities even exist. I guess the toughest challenge is trying to separate what is legit from what might be a waste of time. Is there some sort of a scholarship worthiness tracker to make sure that they aren't going to leave a student hanging by not coming through?

A friend told me about an boy who received a large scholarship for diving. The college he applied to had a diving team and they offer scholarships for that. My friend is now pushing her daughter to join the High School diving team in hopes of getting a similar scholarship for her.

Point of technical correction: Trap shooting is done with a shotgun not a rifle.

But your point is well taken. Vocation is another source of financial aid. My daughter chose a church related vocation and received a large amount of financial aid from our church body and our local congregation.

I did not have any scholarships or grants. Had options to at football at division 2 school schools, but most were extremely expensive private schools and division 2 and below are not permitted to offer full rides for athletics. 50% of 30k is still a lot!

So what did I do? Found the cheapest school that offered the best education for the money. This meant moving to Fl and recieving the recidency rate after a year if living there. Then I just found a job that provided tuition reimbursement. Worked 25 hours a week for 5 years there and walk out of school with an undergraduate and graduated degree, no debt and money in the bank.

There are all kinds of other options out there for people. I actually feel sorry for people that I work with that I know make less than me doing the same job and have 50-100k in student loans on their balance sheet at 30 years old. How do these people ever get ahead? Whatever that situation, there are options for people, whether it is scholarships or just being willing to think outside of the box.

The business school at my former state university cant give away all the scholarship money it has every year. I sit on an advisory board and its seriously an issue. Not enough people apply for the funds.

Why? Well for one reason its a lot easier to simply take out a large loan then it is to apply for ten $1,000 scholarships. To get these scholarships requires a bit of effort, but they are out there.

The Yakezie bloging group sponsors $500 scholarships just for writing and submitting answers to easy questions and there isn't much competition.

When I went to college, I got my main Academic Achievement scholarship ($28,000 for 4 years) and teamed it up with a Spanish scholarship ($1000 - very few applicants, so hardly any competition), a scholarship from the Honors College ($1000 - they go out of their way to get as many people something as possible), and a scholarship from the University Center for being a respected student employee ($500 for 4 semesters).

My kids are a long way from school, but one idea I've been kicking around is to have them "work" the year before college by researching and applying to scholarships. Since I intend to pay for their education, I could then afford to give them some walking around money during the year to make up for the lost wage income. I know from experience that there is a lot to gain from holding a job during High School, so I need to formulate the plan a little better.

Corey - I worked for one full year before attending college. Then I worked at the same job between 1st and 2nd years. Alas - the summer between 2nd & 3rd years didn't work out and I had to drop out. I had waited about 2 weeks too late to apply for summer work from this college. My own fault. I hadn't realized there was a deadline at this company.

I had no student loans, as there were no student loans when I attended. I did work full time while in school also. I had a $50 grant in aid to our church college and that was it. But - my tuition and room for the whole 2 years was $1,600. I call that my fairy tale. In fact, I completed 6 hours at a community college in '08 that cost me more than one semester of a full load of tuition & room at my original college - I paid $860 for tuition and books for 6 hours and 2 books.

I still feel it is advisable for more kids to work a year or so before they attend college. When you have some life experience before you go, you adjust better, study better and do less partying. It also gives you some job experience and some savings to pay for some of your costs. And if you are working at a job you don't especially care for, you are more willing to stay in school and study hard when you go. You want more in life.

haven't read any of the other comments, but YES, there are a lot of scholarships, the student has to look for them & be motivated though. i remember as a senior, i got on a roll (thanks to God, he was providing for me) and started searching for scholarships like crazy; i remember i found a $7,500 one online. my classmates on the othre hand, weren't interested in applying; i was really surprised they weren't even applying. i would type in a lot of different search words in google like "california high school scholarship 2007" or "tennis scholarship 2007"

i honestly don't know what motivated me but i ended up getting around 32K; i do have to add that it helps being an ethnic minority and low income family but i found one for being in tennis (and i was not the star athelete either just had good/interesting application). that is another thing, you have to make a star application and think of interesting essays.